Dreadful Delight

“We must risk delight. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.”

 - Jack Gilbert

Our first world suffers from unbridled optimism. It’s something we’re born into, and then it perishes by adulthood. Time strikes matches and lights little fires on our skin. We try not to be engulfed in the flames. 

There’s a cliched phrase that when one door closes another opens. But what if they don’t? 

I had a dream that I was in a stale office building. I smelled smoke. I tried to run through the hallways even though my legs were the weight of a thousand bricks. There weren’t stairs so I had to take the elevator, but the door would not open. 

I’ve felt frozen and suspended in a sticky web, in the center of everything - new job offers, new real estate, new babies, new marriages, new raises, rises to fame…all things I’ve been bred to believe I’d earn by now. 

Dear reader, if you’re out there, I write this to you because even when we feel like the insect caught in the web, we are the designers. We are the architects of our own treacherous networks and artworks. Delight in every intricate thread. Try not to despair in the silence. Scream your grievances to the sun and whisper your dreams to the moon.